Making a genuinely scary videogame is no easy task – the most skilled of developers rely on a delicate mixture of scripted moments, subtle audio and video cues, magician-style misdirection and cunning AI in order to keep player nerves on edge. Of course, such efforts must be doubled when you're building a campaign mode that aims to both scare and facilitate co-op play – after all, how can you maintain tension when you've got a buddy chattering away in your headset earpiece and tea-bagging every second enemy you kill?
Valve's Left 4 Dead series manages to keep panic levels high thanks to its dynamic artificial intelligence system, which effectively randomises the locations of enemies and items each time you play through one of its B-movie inspired scenarios. Day 1 Studios, the maker of F.E.A.R. 3, is aiming to achieve something similar with what it has dubbed its "generative scare system".
The generative scare system applies to both scripted horror moments and enemy AI in an effort to enforce an air of unpredictability to both the single-player and co-op experience of F.E.A.R. 3.
"With the generative scare system, the AI and scare moments are going to be reactive to how you play the game," explains senior producer Dan Hay. "So if you're playing F.E.A.R. 3 in single-player you're going to have one experience, but then if you play it in co-op you're going to have a subtly different experience."
The emphasis is on "subtly different" here; F.E.A.R. 3 is a far more story-driven game than Left 4 Dead and thus it can't afford to randomise its gameplay as severely. Instead it creates an uneasy tension each time you play through one of its levels by shifting things up just enough so that you're equally as suspicious of what is lurking in the dark as what isn't.
For example, during our hands-on with the department store level of the game, a Warner Games representative prepped us in advance to watch for ominous ramblings written in blood to flash up on a wall in one of the meat storage areas. It didn't happen, and instead we found ourselves staring in confusion at an otherwise pristine wall while a snarling enemy launched at us from the periphery of the screen and scared the crap out of the both of us, leaving us shivering in each other's arms like Shaggy and Scooby-Doo.
"[The second time you play through the game] you're feeling like an expert, you've played the game and you know exactly what's going to happen," continues Hay. "And then you get that false positive, and all of a sudden you're back on your heels a bit. So our goal was that each time you play the game you're going to have an overall similar experience, it's just that each individual encounter has the possibility of being subtly unique."
Multiple run-throughs of the store level revealed a number of surprises that weren't there the first time, from freakish corpses that hung from the ceiling like fleshy chandeliers to crazed enemies that scurried along window glass like spiders. None of these changes made a dramatic difference to the gameplay, but the impact on the tension level was certainly tangible.Continues